International J ournal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJ CTT) volume 5 number 1 Nov 2013

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page49

Efficient Channel Estimation Based On LTE In
OFDM
Mathe Sowmya
#1
, CH. Ravi Kumar
*2

#1
M.Tech, Department of E.C.E & Sir C.R.Reddy College of Engineering
#2
Asst.Proffesor, Department of E.C.E & Sir C.R.Reddy College of Engineering
Eluru, India

Abstract in this paper, we propose an iterative detecting and
decoding method in LTE Downlink OFDM system based on
reference aided channel estimation. Estimates of the complex
channel gain and variance of the additive noise are derived first
from known reference symbols and channel estimate filter. After
turbo decoding, the decoded bits have been obtained. In order to
obtain estimates of channel gain more accuracy, we adopted
more reference symbols which modulate the decoded bits at the
receiver again to estimate the channel frequency response. Also
the mapping position of the OFDM symbols is consistent with
first transmission. Through estimation of the channel iteratively,
we can use more systems bits as iterative reference symbols.
Simulation results shows that through the iterative channel
estimation, the initial insert reference symbols have been
reduced, the accuracy of channel estimation improved effectively
and the bits error rate of the OFDM system can approach the
perfect channel estimates.

Key words- channel estimation; turbo; LS; iterative.

I. INTRODUCTION
For the next generation of wireless communication systems
OFDM (Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) is a
promising technique. The greatest advantage of OFDM is it
can be consider as either multiplexing technique or
modulation scheme. The greatest advantage with OFDM is its
ability against interfacing in narrowband and frequency
selective fading. In simple words in a system which has single
carrier (single carrier system) a single fade or interfaces may
be a strong reason to fail entire link, but in only a small
percentage of the sub-carriers will be affected multi carrier
system. The total frequency band is divided into N sub-
channels which are non-overlapping frequency bands in
classical method. With a separate unique symbol each sub-
channel is modulated and then these modulate N sub channels
are frequency-multiplexed. It seems good to avoid spectral
overlap of channels to eliminate inter-channel interference.
However, it causes to inefficient use of the available
frequency spectrum.
In cellular 3G services LTE (Long term evolution) is the next
greatest step.LTE technology is a based on a 3GPPstandard
that provides for a downlink speed of up to 150 Mbps and an
uplink speed of up to 50 Mbps. Fixed wireless and wired
standards are already approaching or achieving 100 Mbps or
faster, and LTE is a way for cellular communications to
operate at that high data rate.
OFDM technology is used in LTE downlink to achieve its
high-speed transmission targets. For LTE downlink channel
estimation, recursive wiener filtering is used and it is deduced
that the performance can be increased by repetitive iteration
and the channel is considered static over duration of one
OFDM symbol

The LTE protocols physical layer is unique because it has
asymmetrical modulation and data rates for uplink and
downlink. The standard is designed for full-duplex operation,
with simultaneous transmission and reception. The radio is
optimized for performance on the downlink, because the
transmitter at the base station has plenty of power. On the
uplink, the radio is optimized more for power consumption
than efficiency, because while processing power has
increased, mobile device battery power has stayed essentially
constant.

In this project, we propose a new method which incorporates
an iterative channel estimation and turbo decode to combat
fast channel variation. It reduces the consumption of reference
symbols in the OFDM time frequency resource units and
estimates the channel frequency response accurately at the
premise of less loss performance.

I. SYSTEM MODEL
LTE Architecture:

Figure 1 provides a high-level view of LTE architecture. This
is a snapshot of the part that most closely interacts with the
UE, or mobile device. The entire architecture is much more
complex; a complete diagram would show the entire Internet
and other aspects of network connectivity supporting handoffs
among 3G, 2G, Wi-MAX, and other standards. This particular
device shows the e Node B, which is another name for the
base station, and the interfaces between the e Node B and
UEs. The E-UTRAN is the entire network, which is the
official standards name for LTE.

- eNB: Enhanced Node B, or base station
- UE: User Equipment
- EPC: Evolved Packet Core
- MME: Mobility Management Entity (Control Plane)
- SAE: System Architecture Evolved (User Plane)
- E-UTRAN: Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio
Access


International J ournal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJ CTT) volume 5 number 1 Nov 2013

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page50



Fig 1 LTE Architecture Overview

Frames and Packet Timelines: LTE Downlink

Figure 2 shows a time domain view. At the bottom are radio
frames. A full frame is 10 ms but we normally think in terms
of the 1-ms sub frame, which is the entity that contains the
transport block.


Fig 2: Time domain view of the LTE downlink

Within the transport block is the MAC header and any extra
space (padding). Within that there is the RLC header, and then
within the RLC header there can be a number of PDCPs.
There is a somewhat arbitrary relationship between the IP
packets coming in, which form the SDUs, and how the RLC
PDUs are formed. Therefore you can make the maximum
effective use of radio resources in a fixed period of time.

LTE Downlink Reference Signals Structure:

In order to carry out coherent demodulation in LTE down
link, channel estimation is needed at the receiver end. In case
of OFDM transmission known reference symbols are added
into timefrequency grid for channel estimation. These signals
are called LTE Downlink Reference signals. For time domain,
reference symbols are slottedin in the first and the third last
elements of resource grid, whereas reference signals are
inserted over every six subcarriers in frequency domain. For
an accurate channel estimation over entire gird and reducing
noise in channel estimates, a twodimensional timefrequency
interpolation/averaging is required over multiple reference
symbols. One reference signal is transmitted from each
antenna to estimate the channel quality corresponding to each
path when a multiple antenna scheme is applied. In this case,
reference signals are mapped on different subcarries of
resource grid for different antennas to refrain from
interference. Resource elements used to transmit reference
signals from antenna1 are not reused on antenna2 for data
transmission; these places are filled with zeros. Allocation of
these reference symbols is shown in figure 3.



Figure 3: Allocation of Reference Symbols for two antenna transmissions

II. OFDM Structure in LTE Downlink system

In LTE downlink structure, one radio frame consists of 20
sub-frames where each sub frame is divided into two time
slots. Each slot has 6 or 7 OFDM symbols. The numbers of
subcarriers in each OFDM symbol depends on the numbers of
resource blocks used. A physical resource block is defined as
DL
SYM
N consecutive OFDM symbols in the time domain and
International J ournal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJ CTT) volume 5 number 1 Nov 2013

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page51

RB
SC
N consecutive subcarriers of frequency 15 kHz each, in
the frequency domain. As per configuration 6 =
DL
SYM
N when
extend cyclic prefix is used and
RB
SC
N =12. A physical
resource block thus consists of
RB
SC
DL
SYM
N N - resource
elements, corresponding to one slot in the time domain and
180 kHz in the frequency domain. Physical resources are
numbered from 0 to
DL
DL
N
1
in the frequency domain. The
reference signal sequence for channel estimation shall be
mapped to complex-valued modulation symbols.

Iterative estimation system model

Consider an OFDMLTE system which consists of single-user
single-antenna with N subcarriers as shown in Fig. 4. An N
1 complex symbol vector, using QPSK or 16-QAM the turbo
encoded, interleaved, and rate-matched bits are mapped. The
modulated symbols are mapped into the OFDM time-
frequency resource grid which is defined in LTE downlink.
Also, the reference symbols are mapped to resource grid.

Channel Estimation in LTE

In this session, channel estimation techniques used in LTE
down link are described. Channel estimation is a vital part of
receivers designs used in mobile communication systems. The
effect of the channel on the transmitted information must be
estimated in order to recover the transmitted information
correctly. The estimation of channel effects is often based on
an approximate underlying model of the radio propagation
channel. The receiver can precisely recover the transmitted
information as long as it can keep track of the varying radio
propagation channels. Channel models are described in this
session.

Signal Model

In this work, we consider one OFDM symbol to perform
channel estimation in LTE down link. Therefore receive
symbol at the i
th
symbols and the k
th
subcarriers of the
resource gird is denoted by Y (i, k), the transmit model can be
describe:

Y (i, k) = X (i, k) +H (i, k) N (i, k)

Therefore we can estimate the frequency response by
comparing the received reference symbols and the original
reference symbols, then the detected symbols are de-mapped
into soft bits, finally, through turbo decoder, we can get
decode the transmit system bits.





IV. CHANNEL ESTIMATION TECHNIQUES

Pilotassisted Channel Estimation

The pilot assisted channel estimation process consists of two
steps; first statistical estimation of the channel at OFDM tones
consisting of reference symbols is determined using statistical
methods including Squares (LS) and Minimum Mean Squares
(MMSE) estimates. Different pilots assisted channel
estimation schemes can be employed for the estimation of the
channel effects on the transmitted signal. The response of the
channel at the data subcarriers is subsequently determined by
interpolation. The interpolators used for the purpose of
estimation are linear, second order, cubic or time domain
interpolators derived from both the statistical and
deterministic point of view. Various publications can be found
that deal with one overall these estimation criteria for pilot
assisted channel estimation of OFDM applications from CIR
or CFR prospective.

Least Square Estimation

Least Square based parameter estimation approach aims at
determining the channel impulse response from the known
transmitted reference symbols in the following way:



( )
( )
( )
( )
( )
( ) (
(

=
N r
N r
r
r
r
r
LS
X
Y
X
Y
X
Y
G , ,
2
2
1
1


Where
r
N
LS
C G e the estimated channel frequency response
on the sub carriers which contains reference symbols. This
response can be interpolated over full frequency range in
order to obtain the channel frequency response for the
subcarriers carrying data symbols. The interpolation can be
performed in time domain or frequency domain.
The signal received in time domain can be expressed as
follows:
+ = h F A F Y
L r
H
r


The channel can be estimated using Least Squares, in time
domain in the following

r
H H
Y S S S h
1
) (

=
Solving the above two equations, we get the expression for LS
estimates.

r
H H
R r
H
L L r
H
L
H
L
Y F A Y F F A A F h
1
) (

~

Regularized LS Estimation

International J ournal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJ CTT) volume 5 number 1 Nov 2013

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page52

a
In this method, small constant term is added to the diagonal
entries for regularizing the Eigen values of the matrix to be
inverted. In this case, the channel impulse response becomes
of the form,
r
H H
R r
H
L L r
H
L
H
L reg
Y F A Y F F A A F aI h
1
) (

+ =

The value of has to be selected such that the inverse matrix
is least perturbed.

Minimum Mean Square Estimation

LS channel estimation method has been described which is
computationally simple but its performance is not good.
Another method to estimate the CIR is minimum mean square
estimator (MMSE) which has better performance than LS but
it is computationally complex. This method intends at the
minimization of the mean square error between the exact and
estimated CIRs. In this section we will discuss linear
minimum mean square estimator (LMMSE). The CIR can be
calculated using LMMSE in the following way

r y y hy
Y R R h
r r r
1

=

Here
r r
y y
R is the auto covariance of vector
Yr
and R
hyr
is the
cross covariance of vectors h and Y
r
. These covariance
matrices for the above equation can be calculated as,

Nr
2 H
r
H
r hh r r
H
r
H
r
I T X R T (X T X = h

o +

Fundamentals of turbo codes:

In order to explain the proposed parallel Turbo decoder
architecture, the fundamentals of Turbo codes are briefly
described in this section.

Turbo encoder structure:

As shown in Fig. 4, the Turbo encoding scheme in the LTE
standard is a parallel concatenated convolution code with two
8-state constituent encoders and one quadratic permutation
polynomial (QPP) inter leaver. The function of the QPP inter
leaver is to take a block of N-bit data and produce a
permutation of the input data block. From the coding theory
perspective, the performance of a Turbo code depends
critically on the inter leaver structure. The basic LTE Turbo
coding rate is 1/3.It encodes an N-bit information data block
into a codeword with 3N+12 data bits, where 12 tail bits are
used for trellis termination. The initial value of the shift
registers of the 8-state constituent encoders shall be all zeros
when starting to encode the input information bits.
Turbo decoder structure:
The basic structure of a Turbo decoder is functionally
illustrated in Fig. 5. A Turbo decoder consists of
two maximum posterior decoders (MAP) separated
by an interleave that permutes the input sequence.

Fig.4: Structure of rate 1/3 Turbo encoder in LTE.

Each Turbo iteration is divided into two half
iterations. During the first half iteration, MAP
decoder 1 is enabled. It receives the soft channel
information (soft value L
s
for the systematic bit and
soft value L
p1
for the parity bit) and the a priori
information L
1
from the other constituent MAP
decoder through de-interleaving (

) to generate
the extrinsic information L
1
at its output.



Fig 5: Basic structure of an iterative Turbo decoder. (a) Iterative
decoding based on MAP decoders. (b) Forward/backward
recursions on the trellis diagram.
Likewise, during the second half iteration, MAP
decoder 2 is enabled, and it receives the soft channel
information (soft value L
s
for a permuted version of
the systematic bit and soft value L
p 2
for the parity
bit) and the a priori information L
2 from
MAP
decoder 1 through interleaving to generate the
extrinsic information L
e
at its out put . This iterative
process repeats until the decoding has converged
International J ournal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJ CTT) volume 5 number 1 Nov 2013

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page53

o r the maximum n u mb e r of iterations has
been reached. The MAP algorithm at each
constituent MAP decoder computes the log-
likelihood ratios (LLRs) of the a post er i or i
probabilities (APPs) for information bit uk
.

MAP algorithms

Corresponding to different contents of encoder memories the
encoder can be in one of 2
M
States for the binary input of
alphabet {1,-1}. The trellis structure is exploited to compute
the a posteriori L-values

=
=
=
=
=
=
1 ), , (
'
1 ), , (
'
,
,
) , (
) , (
log
) 1 (
) 1 (
log ) (
xk s s
k
xk s s
k
k
k
k
s S
s S
y x p
y x p
x L

Where s 'and s represent the states of the encoder element at
time k-1 and k, and y are the received sequence of length N,
respectively. Dividing the received sequence into three
separate terms and applying the Bayes chain rule, we get

1 , 1
'
1
1 , 1
'
( ). , (
) ( ) , (
+
+ +
= =
= =
k k k
k n k k
y s p s sk s s P
s s y p s s


Here using forward or backward algorithm the above equation
can be evaluated as 3 terms
) , ( ) , (
) ( ) (
) , ( ) (
1
'
, 1
1 , 1
k k k
k n k k k
k k k
y s s p s s
s s y s p s
y s s p s
= =
= = =
= =
+
+

|
o

Using the forward and backward recursions

()

() are
computed as

()

()
()

()

()
()

()

Here the important is the calculation of the

) is
different for both the encoder and decoder, since the existence
of treelis codes.

For the equalizer

) (

))
For decoder

) (

))

Over AWGN channel the turbo decoding without the use of
Inter State Information

(

).

Using the extrinsic Jacobian logarithmic function The log-
Map algorithm introduced to evaluates the

(s) and

(s)
and

(s, s').

() Max [

)]

() Max [

)]
Where

) ( (|

|))

(s),

(s), and

(s) are the logarithmic values of

(s)
and

(s) and

(s, s'), respectively.

MAP log likelihood ration of the decoder is determined as
follows:
L (

) =
(

()

)]

()

)]

In the trellis structure max operation is performed in first and
second part only .the main advantage of the Max-Log-Map is
ignores the interference caused by the SNR.

V. SUMULIATION AND PERFORMACE ANALYSIS

In this paper we, Matlab is used to realize the simulation
experiment.



Fig3: Comparison of BER for various estimation techniques.

International J ournal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJ CTT) volume 5 number 1 Nov 2013

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page54

B. Simulation results:

In Fig3, We can see that the performance of the LS estimation
is worse in the fading channel. The reason for the low
estimation accuracy is that we have little reference symbols to
interpolate the channel response. After reconstructing the
original transmission OFDM symbols. It means that use more
system signals as reference symbol; the performance of the
iterative LS estimation could near the MMSE estimation. As a
comparison, the BER curve of perfect channel estimation is
depicted in the Fig. The simulation result shows that through
the proposed iterative channel estimation method, dramatic
performance improvements can be achieved with the LS
estimation and that the advantage of low implementation
complexity makes it possible widely used in the practical
OFDM system.

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Mathe Sowmya currently pursuing her M.Tech degree in Sir C.R.Reddy
college of Engineering, Affiliated to Andhra University. She was graduated
from JNTU Kakinada in the year of 2011.



CH. Ravi Kumar, currently working as an Assistant Professor in Sir
C.R.Reddy Engineering College, Eluru. He has done much amount of work
towards the new concepts in the era of turbo codes and pursuing Ph.D. degree
from JNTU Kakinada. He was post graduated in M.Tech from JNTUK
Kakinada and graduated in B.E in SRKR Engineering College, with the both
specializations are in Electronic and Communication Engineering.
[1] .